The massacre is a striking incident, but one for which we have only limited evidence (in common with most of the events of the period). There is a reference to it in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle<\/a>,<\/em> which notes that \u201cin this year the king ordered to be slain all the Danish men who were in England\u201d, and a further more detailed comment in a diploma of King \u00c6thelred (the reigning monarch at the time) for the monastery of St Frideswide, Oxford, of 1004. That diploma describes how the Danes in that city sought sanctuary in a church, which was set upon and burnt down by \u201call the people in pursuit\u201d.<\/p>\n Archaeological evidence has recently supplemented those sources, with discovery and excavation of mass graves in Oxford<\/a> and Dorset<\/a>. Both excavations, but particularly the Oxford one, have been linked to the events of November 1002 as possible mass execution sites.<\/p>\n With that limited dataset, the question of how widespread the violence was, and whether it deserves to be called a massacre at all, has been subject to considerable academic debate. Dr Savill spoke to the HistoryExtra <\/em>podcast, and this is his take on the matter:<\/p>\n \u201cIt depends on what you\u2019re reading. If you\u2019re looking at the later sources coming from the Normans and Anglo-Normans, it was depicted as hyper-bloody, with babies being snatched and thrown out of windows and stuff like that, and it was happening all across the nation. Our only really concrete evidence for it is what we see in Oxford. But the point to make is the fact that this gets its own big entry in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle<\/em>, which is pretty laconic most of the time, signifies that this was a serious event.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the Chronicle<\/em>,\u201d says Dr Savill, \u201cthey phrase it as something that applies to the kingdom at large. The thinking across the last few decades is that perhaps we\u2019re not looking at total genocide, but that small groups of settlers within towns, people who were with the Danish army \u2013 mercenaries or former mercenaries \u2013 were killed on that day. You get into slightly dodgy territory by down-talking massacres, but what\u2019s important is that this clearly played a significant role in public memory. Whatever size it was, it was perceived as significant and that\u2019s the key point.\u201d<\/p>\n To grasp why the Danes living in England at the start of the 11th century were singled out for such treatment, you have to understand the context of the reign of King \u00c6thelred II. Famous for his posthumously applied and pejorative moniker of \u2018the Unready\u2019, he has been the subject of some revision in recent years and with a corrective challenge to the view that he was on an \u201cendless hapless downward path of eventually losing the kingdom\u201d. Scholars have recently emphasised how the state was well-managed and centralised in his reign, and that he himself was calculating, rather than incompetent.<\/p>\n \u00c6thelred had a long reign, from 978\u20131016, and one punctuated by serious incursions from Viking raiders<\/a>. \u00c6thelred\u2019s response to the arrival of Viking<\/a> forces in great numbers in the 990s was to pay them off, and to employ them as mercenaries. As a consequence in 1002, there was a truce, but also considerable concern about a court conspiracy, with the Danes there implicated in a plot to overthrow the king.<\/p>\n Academics have argued that, rather than an unregulated bout of mob violence, the events of 13 November 1002 were a planned response to this conspiracy plot, possibly drawn up by reform-minded churchmen among \u00c6thelred\u2019s counsellors.<\/p>\n According to Dr Savill, a second and more interesting strand to the revision of \u00c6thelred (for this, he recommends Prof Levi Roach\u2019s recent biography \u00c6thelred The Unready<\/em><\/a>) has been to \u201cemphasise the degree to which the idea of religion and reform really comes into play from the 990s. \u00c6thelred is what we might call a penitential king, who publicly admits and arguably does penance for his own personal sins. This was linked to the creation of the idea of the English as God\u2019s people, a theocratic kingdom that would look good in God\u2019s eyes\u201d.<\/p>\n That\u2019s important in the context of Dr Savill\u2019s interpretation, which is that not only was the massacre a planned act, but that it was planned specifically to take place on the feast day of St Brice. Brice, or Brictius, was a fifth-century bishop of Tours in what\u2019s now northern France. As a saint he cuts a curious figure because in life, he was unpopular as bishop, faced a conspiracy from his own subjects, did penance, and then returned triumphantly. There were parallels therefore to King \u00c6thelred, and Brice perhaps offered a suitable saintly figure who might intercede and help drive out the Danes.<\/p>\n What\u2019s important is that this clearly played a significant role in public memory <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
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